XXXXKrasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership
2013
Journal of Management
Vol. 39 No. 5, July 2013 1308-1338
DOI: 10.1177/0149206312471388
© The Author(s) 2013
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sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Destructive Leadership: A Theoretical Review,
Integration, and Future Research Agenda
Dina V. Krasikova
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Stephen G. Green
James M. LeBreton
Purdue University
In this article, we propose a framework for understanding destructive leadership that summarizes the
extant destructive leadership research and extends it in new directions. By reviewing the current
literature on destructive leadership and drawing on organizational leadership theory and the more
general research on deviant behaviors in organizations, we identify the underlying features and
mechanisms that define destructive leadership. Recognizing that each form of destructive leadership
currently studied (e.g., abusive supervision, petty tyranny, and pseudo-transformational leadership)
addresses aspects of destructive leadership but fails to capture the complete picture of the phenomenon, we clarify the boundaries among the constructs studied within the domain of destructive
leadership, address some ambiguities about the nature of destructive leadership, make explicit some
characteristics of destructive leadership that set it apart from other forms of leading, and integrate
this thinking into a theoretical model that helps us understand the manifestations of destructive
leadership, and their antecedents and consequences.
Keywords:
destructive leadership; destructive goals; influence; abusive supervision; deviant
behaviors; counterproductive work behaviors
Researchers are increasingly paying attention to a variety of forms of leadership that have
been characterized as being “destructive” (e.g., destructive leadership, abusive supervision,
Acknowledgments: The second author and the third author contributed equally to this article and are listed alphabetically. The authors would like to thank Michelle K. Duffy, four anonymous reviewers, Kelly Schwind Wilson, and
Robert B. Kaiser for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this article.
Corresponding author: Dina V. Krasikova, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, College of Business Administration,
1240 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
E-mail: dkrasikova2@unl.edu
1308
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1309
petty tyranny). A number of studies have been devoted to examining the dimensionality of
such forms of leadership (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007), identifying their antecedents and
consequences (Tepper, 2000), and, to a lesser extent, proposing theoretical models explaining the nature of such leadership (Einarsen, Aasland, & Skogstad, 2007; Wang, Sinclair, &
Deese, 2010). Despite the fact that research on these forms of leadership has grown in the
past few years, it is still plagued with three problems: (a) the lack of a unified definition of
“destructive” leadership that would clarify boundaries of the construct and distinguish it
from the related phenomena, (b) a multiplicity of constructs used to describe the phenomenon of “destructive” leading (e.g., abusive supervision, petty tyranny, pseudo-transformational leadership, personalized charismatic leadership, strategic bullying, and managerial
tyranny), and (c) the lack of the unified theoretical framework (cf. Tepper, 2007) based on a
shared understanding of what destructive leadership is and what it is not. These problems
reinforce each other and impede efficient scientific communication, progress of empirical
research, and accumulation of knowledge about psychological processes underlying
“destructive” leadership. Consequently, the purpose of this article is to address these shortcomings and to clarify the nature and process of “destructive” leading.
In examining this phenomenon, we adopted the term destructive leadership for several
reasons. First, it appears to capture well the inherently harmful nature of destructive leading
that is described in its many forms in the literature (e.g., abusive supervision or tyranny).
Second, this term appears to be widely accepted by the scientific community. We find it in
the titles of the special issue of the Leadership Quarterly (vol. 18, no. 3, 2007) and the
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference symposia Leading
Destructively: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of Destructive Leaders (SIOP,
2008) and Destructive Leadership: Measurement, Antecedents, and Outcomes (SIOP, 2009).
The current article seeks to make two contributions. First, we review, summarize, and integrate the extant literature on destructive leadership, as well as the more general literature on
organizational leadership and research on deviant behaviors in organizations, to identify the
characteristic features of destructive leadership and distinguish it from related yet distinct constructs (e.g., counterproductive work behaviors or CWB). Toward that end, we also draw nomological
distinctions between the constructs of abusive supervision, petty tyranny, pseudo-transformational
leadership, personalized charismatic leadership, strategic bullying, and managerial tyranny, and
demonstrate that research on these constructs suggests that destructive leadership can manifest
itself in leaders’ pursuit of destructive goals (i.e., goals that contradict the legitimate interests of
organizations) and destructive leadership style (i.e., style that involves the use of harmful methods of influence with followers). Second, our review gives rise to our theoretical model that
serves to explain the psychological processes that characterize destructive leadership and links
those processes to their antecedents and outcomes. The purpose of this model is to parsimoniously integrate diverse conceptualizations of destructive leadership and provide a framework for
moving forward with future studies in this area.
Before proceeding, we clarify boundary conditions for our analysis. First, we focus on
analyzing leaders’ explicit acts of influencing followers to achieve goals rather than on
implicit modeling influences. While leaders may indirectly influence followers’ behaviors
by serving as role models (Bandura, 1973), we leave the analysis of such implicit influences
beyond the scope of this article.
1310 Journal of Management / July 2013
Second, any act committed by a member of a given organization can be judged as constructive or destructive using different standards—actor’s self-interest, needs of other individuals within the organization, organizational goals, societal norms, or broader moral
principles. Evaluations of the same behavior obtained from multiple perspectives do not
necessarily converge. Therefore, it is necessary to specify what perspective we are taking
when analyzing the nature of destructive leadership. Given that the primary task of organizational leaders is to act in the interests of the organization (i.e., influence followers to
achieve goals espoused by the organization and set new goals for the organization that are
aligned with its interests; Eisenhardt, 1989; Mumford, Gessner, Connelly, O’Connor, &
Clifton, 1993), we adopt the organization and organizational members as key points of reference when assessing whether leadership is destructive. Therefore, in our analysis, we do not
address such phenomena as corporate social (ir)responsibility that is concerned with social
implications of organizational actions (Bansal & Kandola, 2004) and unethical leadership
(Brown & Trevino, 2006) that is focused on the moral (not limited by organizational interests) aspect of leaders’ acts. That said, we realize that actions of organizational leaders have
implications not only for organizations and organizational members but also for organizational outsiders (e.g., customers, members of the greater society). Thus, drawing connections
among intraorganizational destructive leadership, corporate (ir)responsibility, and principles
of business ethics is an interesting direction for further research. One initial step in that
direction, however, is to understand destructive leadership as an intraorganizational phenomenon. Therefore, the purpose of the current article is to provide a systematic treatment of
destructive leadership as it unfolds within organizations.
Defining Destructive Leadership
We propose that destructive leadership (DL) is defined as volitional behavior by a leader
that can harm or intends to harm a leader’s organization and/or followers by (a) encouraging followers to pursue goals that contravene the legitimate interests of the organization
and/or (b) employing a leadership style that involves the use of harmful methods of influence
with followers, regardless of justifications for such behavior.
This definition builds on the work of Einarsen et al. (2007; also see Aasland, Skogstad,
Notelaers, Nielsen, & Einarsen, 2010) by viewing DL as a leader’s behavior that violates the
legitimate interests of the organization. However, our definition extends their definition in
three ways. First, while the construct of DL overlaps with other harmful constructs (e.g.,
CWB, workplace aggression), it also represents a specific form of leadership. Thus, we
argue that DL should be viewed as harmful behavior imbedded in the process of leading. By
doing so, we eliminate behaviors falling under the rubric of CWB (e.g., stealing organizational property, gossiping about coworkers; Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Gruys & Sackett,
2003) from the construct space of DL and thereby depart from the work by Einarsen and
colleagues who consider such behaviors manifestations of DL.
Second, although we agree with Einarsen et al. (2007) in that DL harms organizations
and/or leaders’ followers, we believe that it is more accurate and more theoretically meaningful to distinguish between two manifestations of DL—encouraging followers to pursue
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1311
destructive goals and using destructive methods of influence with followers—than simply
drawing a surface distinction between the two targets of such leadership. These two manifestations of DL reflect different processes—setting goals for followers and acting to influence followers to achieve these goals, and are likely to have different predictors and
consequences, as shown below.
Third, by defining DL as volitional behavior that can harm or is intended to harm the
organization or a leader’s followers, we draw a boundary between DL and acts of ineffective
leadership (e.g., incompetence) that represent a leader’s inability to achieve goals valued by
the organization or mobilize followers to achieve such goals. These unique elements of our
definition of DL are discussed in detail in the subsequent sections.
Destructive Leadership as Harmful Behavior Embedded in the Process of Leading
A review of the extant literature reveals that DL is harmful in nature (Einarsen et al.,
2007; Lipman-Blumen, 2005b). Therefore, DL overlaps with other forms of deviant
behavior at the workplace (e.g., workplace aggression, bullying, CWB). However, for
theory development and research purposes, DL needs to be distinguished from harmful
behaviors that are not uniquely performed by leaders. We believe that DL research
should operate within the same set of concepts and assumptions as more general
research on organizational leadership. Therefore, we argue that the distinction between
leaders and managers that has long been emphasized in leadership literature (Hickman,
1990; Kotter, 1990) should also be considered by DL researchers. Specifically, if we are
studying destructive leadership, then we should focus on harmful behaviors perpetrated
by the leader and imbedded in the process of leading. Otherwise, we cannot distinguish
DL from other harmful behaviors that could be performed by any employee regardless
of his or her leadership status. Consequently, even when such harmful behavior is performed by a person in a leadership position (e.g., manager), it may have nothing to do
with the process of leading and thus should not be termed DL. For example, a manager
stealing is not DL, rather it is a CWB; a manager directing his or her followers to steal
is DL. Thus, the important distinction between CWB and DL is that CWB involves
harmful actions that do not involve leading others, whereas DL involves harmful actions
performed by leaders in the process of leading followers toward certain goals.
Two Manifestations of Destructive Leadership: Encouraging Followers to Pursue
Destructive Goals and Using Destructive Methods of Influence With Followers
The essence of leadership lies in identifying goals and influencing followers to pursue
those goals (House & Shamir, 1993; Yukl, 2006). Thus, we propose that DL is manifested in
the leader (a) identifying destructive goals and fostering followers’ pursuit of those goals
and/or (b) using destructive actions to mobilize followers to attain goals set by the leader.
These two manifestations of DL are independent of each other, but could be used jointly by
a leader.
1312 Journal of Management / July 2013
The first manifestation of DL occurs when leaders encourage followers to pursue goals
that undermine the organization’s legitimate interests (Einarsen et al., 2007). For example,
if an organization prioritizes high levels of product safety, a leader who encourages his or
her followers to distribute unsafe products to maximize sales has fostered the pursuit of a
destructive goal. The second manifestation of DL occurs when a leader uses harmful actions
(verbal or nonverbal) to influence followers in the pursuit of goals, harmful to the organization or not (i.e., uses a DL style). For example, a leader who bullies followers to make them
focus on greater product safety has used a DL style, even though this leader pursues a goal
espoused by the organization.
Researchers have examined a number of constructs that capture the phenomenon of DL.
Although these constructs were proposed and studied independently, they overlap in terms
of the manifestations of DL they represent. Table 1 organizes these constructs and identifies
redundancies and distinctions among them.
In summary, we see that what has been portrayed as a number of relatively independent lines
of DL research is actually a body of empirical research that takes different approaches to studying
the two underlying manifestations of DL identified above—setting destructive goals and using
destructive methods of influence. Consequently, we argue that DL is more accurately, completely,
and parsimoniously defined by recognizing that it represents the leader’s pursuit of destructive
goals, the leader’s use of destructive methods of influence, or both.
Destructive Leadership as a Volitionally Harmful Behavior
Extant research is lacking consensus regarding whether DL should be considered intentional in nature or not. DL researchers either exclude intent to harm from their conceptualizations of DL (e.g., Einarsen et al., 2007; Tepper, 2007; Wang et al., 2010) or omit the entire
question of intent from their discussions of the phenomenon (e.g., Ashforth, 1994; Ma,
Karri, & Chittipeddi, 2004). A number of DL researchers, however, do see value in distinguishing between leadership that is intentionally harmful and leadership that is unintentionally harmful (Craig & Kaiser, in press; Kelloway, Sivanathan, Francis, & Barling, 2005;
Lipman-Blumen, 2005b; Thoroughgood, Tate, Sawyer, & Jacobs, 2012). We believe that one
way to reconcile this inconsistency is to clearly define what is meant and what is not meant
by intentionality of DL. This reconciliation is needed because the lack of consensus regarding intentionality of DL has resulted in ambiguous definitions of DL, prevented DL from
being studied as a unique form of leadership, and impeded the evolution of DL literature as
independent of the extensive literature on leader (in)effectiveness.
Leaders make choices about what goals to pursue and how to achieve those goals. A DL
process will arise if the leader chooses to pursue a goal that can harm the well-being of the
organization in some way (e.g., seeking personal wealth at the expense of organization’s
earnings). DL also can arise when the leader chooses to pursue a goal, organizationally
sanctioned or not, in a way that can harm the well-being of the followers (e.g., bullying
them). Of course, both types of intentions and manifestations of DL can occur at the same
time. Leader’s choice of a harmful goal and/or harmful methods of influence is in both cases
intentional or volitional in the sense that this leader chooses this particular goal and/or action
1313
Construct Space
Abusive supervision Captures “subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors
engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors,
excluding physical contact” (Tepper, 2000: 178; also see Mitchell &
Ambrose, 2007; Tepper, 2007).
Petty tyranny
Captures leadership that involves playing favorites, using authority for
personal purposes, and belittling followers (Ashforth, 1994, 1997, 2003;
Reed & Bullis, 2009).
Captures leadership that emphasizes personal goals over follower needs and
Pseudoorganizational objectives; relies on the use of manipulation, deception, and
transformational
coercion; weighs a leader’s authority more heavily than independent
leadership
follower thinking; and cultivates dependence on the leader, favoritism, and
competition among followers (Barling, Christie, & Turner, 2008; Bass &
Steidlmeier, 1999; Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002; Price, 2003).
Captures leaders’ emphasis on self-interest, manipulating and disempowering
Personalized
followers, restricting their intellectual independence, and purposeful
charismatic
creation of unbalanced relations with followers (Howell, 1988; O’Connor,
leadership
Mumford, Clifton, Gessner, & Connelly, 1995; Popper, 2002; Sankowsky,
1995).
Strategic bullying
Captures “strategically selected tactics of influence by leaders designed to
convey a particular image and place targets in a submissive, powerless
position whereby they are more easily influenced and controlled, in order to
achieve personal and/or organizational objectives” (Ferris et al., 2007: 197).
Managerial tyranny Captures “a leader’s singular, obsessive, crystal-clear vision and the relentless,
hard-driving methods he uses to steer the organization toward achieving this
vision” (Ma et al., 2004: 34). Leaders as tyrants are often motivated by
organizational goals, but might approach them as means to the self-serving
ends (e.g., “creating an empire, winning championships, being recognized as a
maestro, being viewed as a savior”; Ma et al., 2004: 35).
Construct
×
×
Captures
Destructive
Actions, but Is
Silent About
Goals
×
×
×
×
Captures
Destructive Actions
Captures
Destructive Actions Taken Toward the
Achievement of
Taken Toward the
Destructive or
Achievement of
Destructive Goals Constructive Goals
Table 1
Distinctions and Overlaps Among the Constructs Capturing
the Phenomenon of Destructive Leadership
1314 Journal of Management / July 2013
among other available more constructive alternatives. That said, there is nothing in our
definition that requires the leader to be consciously aware of this intent to harm. The literature on implicit personality has readily documented that many times, the intent to cause harm
occurs outside of conscious awareness (James & LeBreton, 2010, 2012; LeBreton,
Barksdale, Robin, & James, 2007). In extreme cases, harming an organization or followers
may be the leader’s goal (e.g., a leader may encourage followers to sabotage organizational
equipment). In other cases, a leader may pursue legitimate goals but do so in a destructive
manner (e.g., bully followers to make them achieve higher levels of performance). In either
case, the leader may or may not have a conscious self-perception that he or she is causing
harm. Instead, the leader may develop implicit rationalizations for acts of DL to protect one’s
ego and sense of self (James & LeBreton, 2010).
Thus, to avoid the confusion between the terms “intent to harm” and “goal to harm,” we
define DL as a leader’s volitional behavior that can harm or intends to harm a leader’s
organization or followers, thereby emphasizing that such harm-doing is not the leader’s goal
in itself (although could be in some cases), but rather the leader’s choice to pursue a goal or
enact behavior that is harmful in nature. We also note that acts of intentional harm (i.e.,
aggression) are often unconsciously rationalized by individuals, thus preserving the conscious self-perception that they are nice, reasonable, nonaggressive individuals (James &
LeBreton, 2010). Thus, we make no presumption that destructive leaders will necessarily
view themselves, their goals, or their actions as harmful (although this is also possible).
Destructive Leadership versus Ineffective Leadership
The leadership literature already is evolving along two supposedly distinguishable lines
of research: research on leader (in)effectiveness (e.g., Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam,
2003; Hinkin & Schriesheim, 2008; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Kelloway et al., 2005) and
research on DL (e.g., Einarsen et al., 2007; Tepper, 2007). The implication is that authors do
see DL as a particular form of leading that should be distinguished from just being ineffective. However, a distinct boundary between these two forms of leadership has not been
clearly drawn. For a number of reasons addressed below, we believe that the volitional
nature of harm-doing underlying DL is a key demarcation line that sets it apart from ineffective leadership.
First, prior leadership theorists provide a precedent for drawing this distinction by splitting the
domain of “bad” leadership into two distinct constructs. For example, Kelloway et al. (2005)
distinguish between abusive and passive leadership. The former occurs when leaders “engage in
aggressive or punitive behaviors toward their employees” (Kelloway et al., 2005: 91). The latter
occurs when leaders lack leadership skills and encompasses laissez-faire leadership and passive
management by exception. Moreover, Kelloway et al. (2005) draw a parallel between abusive
leadership and aggression that is commonly defined as intentional harm-doing (e.g., Geen, 2001;
Neuman & Baron, 1998). Lipman-Blumen (2005b: 29) takes a step further and differentiates
between intentionally toxic leaders who “deliberately harm others or enhance themselves at
other’s expense” and unintentionally toxic leaders who “cause serious harm by careless and reckless behavior, as well as by their incompetence.”
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1315
Figure 1
Position of the Construct of Destructive Leadership Among the Related Constructs
Capturing Behaviors Performed by Organizational Members and Forms of
Organizational Leadership
Volitional
Harmful
behavior
Unintentional
Constructive
behavior
Organizational behavior that
involves no leading
Organizational leadership
CWB, aggression
Destructive leadership
Poor task performance,
safety incidents
Ineffective leadership
Effective task performance,
organizational
citizenship behaviors
Constructive forms of leading
This distinction is echoed in the job performance literature, which has concluded that CWBs
should be distinguished from poor task performance (Murphy, 1989; Sackett, 2002). Although
CWB and poor task performance are similar in the sense that both are harmful to individuals or
an organization (both could impede the production process, involve unsafe behaviors, and damage individual or organizational property), they differ in their natures: The former is a volitionally
harmful behavior (Gruys & Sackett, 2003), whereas the latter results from low ability and/or
motivation (Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, & Sager, 1993) and therefore is unintentionally harmful.
Just as poor task performance could result from incompetence and low motivation, ineffective
leadership can be considered a demonstration of a leader’s natural inaptitude and/or low motivation to lead (e.g., Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Craig & Kaiser, in press; Foti & Hauenstein, 2007).
DL, on the contrary, does not necessarily imply a leader’s incompetence or low motivation.
Rather, it embodies a leader’s choice to lead followers toward goals that harm or intend to harm
an organization or to adopt a harmful style of leading followers.
The above-listed features of DL determine its unique position among other constructs
capturing forms of deviant behaviors at the workplace and forms of organizational leadership. As shown in Figure 1 and discussed above, DL combines features of deviant behaviors
and organizational leadership. As such, DL differs from (a) constructive forms of leading
(e.g., transformational leadership) that do not involve harmful behaviors, (b) CWB, aggression, and similar phenomena that do not involve leading others, (c) ineffective leadership
that is unintentionally harmful, and (d) poor task performance and accidental harm-doing
(e.g., harm-doing due to violation of safety standards) that do not involve leading others and
are unintentionally harmful. Based on our reframing of DL, below we propose a preliminary
theoretical model of DL.
Toward a Theoretical Model of Destructive Leadership
Figure 2 contains our proposed model of DL. In the sections that immediately follow, we
examine antecedents of DL and discuss the processes likely to underlie leaders’ choice to
engage in DL. Then, we examine the potential consequences of DL.
1316 Journal of Management / July 2013
Figure 2
The Proposed Theoretical Model
Leader Characteristics
• Characteristics that negatively
bias the interpretation of
events
• Tendencies to justify harmdoing
• Impaired self-regulation
Goal Blockage
• Dispositional tendencies to
emphasize self-interest over
interests of others
Destructive Leadership
Leader’s goals and
organization’s goals are
misaligned
Leader encourages
followers to pursue
destructive goals
Leader chooses to engage
in destructive leadership
Leader perceives
the achievement of personal
or organizationally endorsed
l tto bbe th
t d bby
goals
thwarted
followers
• Scarcity of resources
Primary harm
to the organization and
followers
Leader employs a
leadership style that
involves the use of
harmful
h
f l methods
h d off
influence
• Factors communicating that
harm-doing is acceptable
• Factors suggesting that
destructive leadership is the
most effective way of achieving
goals
Respon ses to harm:
• Discovery
• Countervailing actions
Leader
discretion
Organizational Context
Factors That Contribute to the Enactment of Destructive Leadership
The proposed model describes DL as a product of dispositional and contextual factors.
More specifically, we propose the following. First, leaders are likely to engage in DL when
they experience difficulty achieving their goals (i.e., experience goal blockage) or, in the
absence of goal blockage, when they are predisposed to harm others. Second, not all leaders
are equally likely to experience situations of goal blockage: Some leader characteristics and
contextual factors make them more likely to find themselves in such situations. In addition,
when goal blockage occurs, not all leaders will react to it with DL: Some characteristics and
contextual factors will make them more likely to favor destructive responses over constructive alternatives. Finally, some contextual factors are likely to determine whether leaders’
choice to pursue destructive goals or use destructive actions translates into DL.
Goal blockage as a predictor of choice to engage in destructive leadership. Research on
leader motivations to act and motivations for enacting harmful behaviors suggests that a
leader’s choice to be destructive is likely rooted in the leader’s perceptions of goal blockage.
Leadership involves setting goals and mobilizing followers to pursue these goals (House
& Shamir, 1993; Yukl, 2006). Thus, goals and goal pursuit are the core elements of leadership that set leadership processes in motion (cf. House, 1971). It follows that leaders’ progress toward goal achievement is an important factor that influences their choices and
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1317
actions. For example, contingency theories of leadership (Hersey & Blanchard, 1982; House
& Mitchell, 1974; Vroom & Yetton, 1973) imply that leaders should choose constructive
methods of leading, such as participation, delegation, and consultation, when the situation is
conducive to such approaches and they will aid goal attainment (e.g., followers are
“mature”—Hersey & Blanchard, 1982; decision problems are structured in a certain way—
Vroom & Yetton, 1973). The use of less constructive approaches (e.g., directive or autocratic
methods of influence or even punishment) is seen as more appropriate when leaders’ goals
are being thwarted (e.g., followers are “immature”—Hersey & Blanchard, 1982; followers
are not likely to accept a leader’s decision—Vroom & Yetton, 1973). Thus, the broader
leadership literature portrays perceived goal blockage as a key motivator for the choices
leaders make and the actions they pursue.
Research on goal blockage has found that deviant behavior is a common response to
situations when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve their goals. For example,
white-collar crime has been explained in terms of the general strain theory postulating that
large-scale manager wrongdoing (e.g., fraud and embezzlement) may be due to blockage of
managers’ economic and status goals (Agnew, Piquero, & Cullen, 2009). Similarly, models
of aggression often emphasize how frustration may result in aggressive behaviors (Anderson
& Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1989). Moreover, goal blockage creates the potential for a
leader to fall short of his or her goals, and, perhaps, to be judged as ineffective. Thus, goal
blockage can threaten a leader’s positive self-image and perceived professional competence,
and is likely to be construed as an ego threat, which has been linked to aggression
(Baumeister & Boden, 1998). Finally, goal blockage may also function as a situationally
induced stressor. Such stressors have also been tied to deviant and aggressive behaviors
(Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001; Salin, 2003). In sum, goal blockage may motivate the leader
to choose harmful approaches to resolving that blockage (cf. Hershcovis et al., 2007).
There are two prototypic scenarios of leaders’ goal blockage that may result in DL. The
first scenario involves misalignment of a leader’s personal goals and goals espoused by the
organization. In these situations, the leader’s attainment of his or her personal goals is
incompatible with the pursuit of organizationally sanctioned goals. When leaders perceive
that their personal goals cannot be achieved in the organization using legitimate means, they
experience strain and may attempt to alleviate this strain by engaging in deviant, from the
organization’s perspective, goal pursuit (Zahra, Priem, & Rasheed, 2005). For example, the
discrepancy between the actual and the desired level of compensation may prompt a leader
to engage in fraudulent activities (e.g., earnings management; Barton, 2001). Thus, perceived goal blockage may motivate a leader to influence followers to pursue his or her personal goals that are destructive by virtue of undermining organizational interests (Bass &
Steidlmeier, 1999).
The second scenario occurs when a leader’s personal goals are aligned with goals
espoused by the organization, but achievement of those goals is thwarted by followers’ performing in unacceptable ways. The literature provides examples of how followers block
leaders’ goals either intentionally (e.g., to retaliate for perceived mistreatment; Tepper,
Duffy, & Shaw, 2001) or unintentionally (e.g., due to incompetence; Kotter, 2003). In such
situations, leaders may use harmful methods of influence to stimulate followers’ progress
toward the achievement of personal or organizational goals (Ashforth, 2003; Barrow, 1976).
1318 Journal of Management / July 2013
Distinguishing between these two forms of leaders’ goal blockage is critical for whether a
leader pursues destructive goals or uses DL styles to resolve the perceived goal blockage.
Thus, we propose,
Proposition 1: The more a leader perceives his or her personal goals to be misaligned with organizational goals, the more likely he or she is to encourage his or her followers to pursue destructive goals.
Proposition 2: The more a leader perceives that the achievement of his or her goals (personal or
organizational) is being thwarted by followers, the more likely he or she is to employ a DL style
to influence followers.
Leader characteristics and organizational context as predictors of goal blockage.
Dispositional factors that are likely to make leaders perceive that their goals are blocked
include characteristics that bias information processing. For example, James and colleagues
(James & LeBreton, 2010, 2012; LeBreton et al., 2007) have discussed how one’s general
predisposition toward implicitly justifying aggressive behaviors results in biased reasoning
such that aggressive individuals are more likely to interpret actions of others as intentionally
harmful. More specifically, an implicit motive to aggress predisposes individuals (a) to
impute hostile and malevolent intent into the behaviors of others (hostile attribution bias—
e.g., followers are not to be trusted; followers are plotting against the leader) and (b) to see
oneself as the victim of inequality, exploitation, and injustice by those who are in positions
of power (victimization bias—e.g., the organization’s president and board of directors
exploit the hard work of the leader for their personal gain, and therefore the leader’s pursuit
of goals that contravene the goals of the organization is seen as a warranted act used to rectify the inequities and strike out against the injustice). Thus, a leader’s implicit motive to
aggress biases his or her judgment and makes him or her more likely to interpret everyday
situations as situations of goal blockage. Similarly, negative trait affectivity has been shown
to make individuals see the world in the negative light and perceive life events as more
stressful (Spector, Zapf, Chen, & Frese, 2000; Watson & Clark, 1984). In addition, individuals with paranoid tendencies (skeptical or argumentative dimension of personality; Hogan &
Hogan, 2001) tend to actively search for and selectively attend to signs of mistreatment in
the behaviors of others. Thus, leaders with high negative affectivity and paranoid dispositional tendencies are also likely to perceive their goals as being blocked by their organization
or followers.
Proposition 3: Leaders’ characteristics that negatively bias interpretation of events (e.g., implicit
motive to aggress, negative trait affectivity, and paranoid tendencies) are positively related to
leaders’ perceptions of goal blockage.
Organizational context may also increase the frequency of situations involving blockage
of leaders’ goals. Leaders’ goal achievement requires resources, such as information, tools,
equipment, materials, budget, and time availability, as well as followers’ services and assistance
and followers’ expertise and motivation to pursue leaders’ goals (cf. Peters & O’Connor, 1980).
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1319
Thus, the organization’s or followers’ inability or unwillingness to supply leaders with these
resources creates situations of goal blockage for leaders.
First, organizations are likely to increase the frequency of goal blockage situations by
failing to provide resources needed for leaders’ goal achievement. It has been shown that
when organizations fail to provide such resources (or provide insufficient amounts of
such resources, or provide resources of low quality; Peters & O’Connor, 1980), organizational members’ ability to perform their work responsibilities is impaired (Peters,
O’Connor, & Rudolf, 1980). By extension, it could be argued that one’s attainment of a
valued goal can be impeded if resources needed for goal achievement are not freely
available. A leader may experience a lack of resources when the organizational authorities or his or her peers purposefully restrict his or her access to information and material
resources. This could occur as an act of intentional obstructionism (Neuman & Baron,
1998) committed by the leader’s superiors and peers who could be motivated by a desire
to repay this leader for mistreatment or undermine the successful competitor (Duffy,
Ganster, & Pagon, 2002). Alternatively, a leader’s limited access to resources needed for
goal achievement could be due to the organization being unable to provide such
resources. This could occur, for example, when goals valued by the leader are not the
organization’s priority (cf. Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005), when
resources are limited and the leader has to share them or compete for them with other
leaders (Salin, 2003), or when the organization is short of resources because of, for
example, being downsized or being on the verge of bankruptcy.
Second, leaders’ followers could be a powerful source of goal blockage if they are
unable or unmotivated to assist with leaders’ goal pursuit or purposefully thwart goal
achievement. First, followers may block leaders’ goal inadvertently, due to their incompetence or inability to devote sufficient time and effort to pursuing those goals (Kotter,
2003). It is also plausible that followers are not motivated to work toward the achievement of leaders’ goals and thereby unintentionally block their achievement. This could
occur, for example, when a leader fails to provide sufficient incentives to motivate goal
achievement by followers (as suggested by the literature on transactional leadership
linking contingent reward with follower motivation; Judge & Piccolo, 2004) or fails to
inspire followers to achieve his or her valued goals (as suggested by research linking
transformational leadership with follower motivation and goal commitment; Judge &
Piccolo, 2004; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). In addition, followers may have low motivation to pursue leaders’ goals due to peer pressure to do so. For example, it has been
shown that followers’ acceptance of uniformly low performance standards, also known
as “restriction of output,” can decrease followers’ commitment to leaders’ goals (Locke,
Latham, & Erez, 1988) thereby promoting goal blockage. Finally, DL literature demonstrates that followers may purposefully block leaders’ goals in an attempt to retaliate for
being mistreated by their leaders (Tepper et al., 2001). Therefore,
Proposition 4: Contextual factors that limit leaders’ access to resources needed for goal achievement (e.g., the organization restricts availability of resources, the organization is short of
resources, followers are incompetent, unmotivated, or intentionally uncooperative) are positively related to leaders’ experience of goal blockage.
1320 Journal of Management / July 2013
As mentioned above, followers may intentionally obstruct leaders’ goals in response to
being abused by leaders (Tepper et al., 2001). Thus, we included a feedback loop linking DL
style and goal blockage by followers in our theoretical model of DL (see Figure 2).
Given that DL is not the only option available to leaders experiencing goal blockage
(other more constructive alternatives may include abandoning the goal that is blocked or
searching for more effective ways to motivate followers to pursue this goal), it is important
to determine what leader characteristics and contextual factors facilitate DL when goal
blockage occurs.
Leader’s choice to engage in destructive leadership in response to goal blockage. The
strain associated with goal blockage is likely to trigger a chain of thoughts about potential
ways to resolve the blockage, thoughts that eventually influence a leader’s choice to engage
in DL or pursue more constructive alternatives. This sense-making process may vary in duration and intensity such that a destructive response might be chosen almost immediately with
minimal conscious cognitive involvement (e.g., choices are more likely to be made implicitly or automatically when a leader’s psychological resources are depleted). Alternatively,
when making this choice, leaders may consider a variety of factors ranging from their beliefs
and immediate desires to the evaluation of their experiences and assessment of the current
situation. These factors may operate independently or in concert within any given episode
of DL.
One such factor is a leader’s desire to retaliate for the experienced goal blockage by
inflicting harm on the organization or followers (Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). According to the
frustration-aggression hypothesis (Berkowitz, 1989; Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, &
Sears, 1939), goal blockage constitutes a negative experience that evokes negative affective
reactions (such as frustration or anger), which may in turn result in an aggressive response
that pursues only one purpose—to harm the source of frustration (Anderson & Bushman,
2002) or some other target that is less powerful and less costly to harm (Tedeschi & Norman,
1985). The DL literature provides some preliminary evidence that leaders may engage in DL
with the purpose of inflicting harm on organizations and followers, as suggested by the studies that examined DL as an act of displaced aggression (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007;
Hoobler & Brass, 2006).
However, DL is not the only available response to goal blockage. Thus, leaders’ choice
of a destructive response to having their goal blocked is likely to depend on their dispositional preparedness to justify harmful behavior as an appropriate reaction to the violation of
personal interests. For example, perpetrators’ positive attitude toward revenge that is used to
rationalize harming the source of mistreatment has been shown to predict aggressive acts
(Douglas & Martinko, 2001). Similarly, external locus of control (Perlow & Latham, 1993)
and hostile attributional style (Douglas & Martinko, 2001) used to attribute experienced
violation of personal interests to external factors (e.g., subordinates are incompetent, organizational authorities are exploitative) and to make other parties accountable for experienced
frustration have been found to predispose individuals to perpetrating aggressive acts. Thus,
Proposition 5: Leaders’ dispositional tendencies to justify harmful behavior in situations when their
interests are violated (e.g., positive attitude toward revenge, external locus of control, and hostile attributional style) moderate the positive relationship between goal blockage and leaders’
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1321
choice to engage in DL such that leaders with higher scores on such characteristics are more
likely to react to goal blockage by choosing to engage in DL.
A related mechanism that could explain a leader’s choice to engage in DL occurs when
leaders are unable to produce a more constructive response due to the scarcity of psychological resources (e.g., attention; ability to regulate one’s emotions; Ashforth & Humphrey,
1993) needed to resolve the situation of goal blockage in a constructive way (Wang et al.,
2010). When goal blockage occurs, most people will experience strain and negative emotions (Spector & Fox, 2002) and feel the urge to make up for this negative experience by
harming the perceived source of goal blockage. Overcoming this immediate desire to harm
the source of goal blockage and designing a more constructive response will likely require
emotional labor and deliberate processing of relevant information in an attempt to find a
constructive solution (e.g., searching for a compromise between personal and organizational
goals, identifying a new goal, searching for more effective ways of motivating followers to
achieve this goal). Thus, if resources are depleted by personal or work-related stressors (e.g.,
interpersonal conflict or role overload; Wang et al., 2010) or simply are allocated to other
tasks, a leader may not be able or willing to consider more constructive ways of resolving
goal blockage and choose to proceed with the simplest, less taxing, and more satisfying at
the moment option—pursue a harmful goal or use harmful methods of influence. It is also
plausible that a leader is unable to effectively regulate his or her emotional and behavioral
responses due to his or her dispositional characteristics. For example, low self-control, one’s
inability to regulate one’s reactions, has been shown to predict aggression (Baumeister &
Boden, 1998; Douglas & Martinko, 2001). Similarly, individuals with high levels of trait
anger who chronically experience intense negative affect that can impair self-regulation
(Anderson & Bushman, 2002) have been found to react to anger-provoking cues with
aggressive behaviors (Douglas & Martinko, 2001). In both cases, whether a source of leaders’ regulation impairment is temporary or relatively stable (i.e., dispositional), it is likely to
make leaders react to goal blockage with destructive goal pursuit and/or actions. Thus,
Proposition 6: Leaders’ temporary or dispositional self-regulation impairment (e.g., depletion of
resources, low self-control, trait anger) moderates the positive relationship between goal blockage and leaders’ choice to engage in DL such that leaders with greater self-regulation impairment are more likely to react to goal blockage by choosing to engage in DL.
Furthermore, leaders may be more likely to engage in DL in situations of goal blockage
if they previously observed their own leaders engaging in DL or witnessed DL enacted by
other leaders in their organization (cf. Bandura, 1973; O’Leary-Kelly, Griffin, & Glew,
1996; Robinson & O’Leary-Kelly, 1998). Given the empirical evidence linking harmful
leader behaviors to follower deviance (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007; Tepper, Henle, Lambert,
Giacalone, & Duffy, 2008) along with the evidence linking social learning experiences to
leadership styles (cf. Restubog, Scott, & Zagenczyk, 2011; Weiss, 1977), we expect that DL
exhibited by a leader’s superiors or peers will positively influence the leader’s choice to
engage in DL.
1322 Journal of Management / July 2013
In addition, harmful behaviors are more likely to be learned when perpetrators or other
individuals enacting these behaviors face no repercussions and/or achieve desired outcomes
via these behaviors (Bandura, 1973; O’Leary-Kelly et al., 1996). This suggests that leaders
may engage in DL if they (or other leaders in their organization) have faced no negative
consequences for prior displays of DL. Previous research provides evidence that both lack
of punishment and presence of positive reinforcement mechanisms promote deviant behaviors (Fox & Spector, 1999; Randall, 1997; Salin, 2003). This realization led us to include
another feedback loop in Figure 2—to the extent the organization fails to discover and
respond to DL with effective countervailing actions, leaders will be more likely to pursue
DL when their goals are blocked. Thus,
Proposition 7: Factors communicating that harmful behaviors are acceptable in the organization
(e.g., leaders’ or other employees’ previous success using DL, and lack of punishment mechanisms) moderate the positive relationship between goal blockage and leaders’ choice to engage
in DL such that when such factors are present, leaders are more likely to react to goal blockage
by choosing to engage in DL.
Also, leaders may choose to engage in DL if they evaluate the context in which they have to
act and determine that DL is the most effective way of achieving their goals. For example, contingency theories of leadership suggest that leaders select leadership styles based in part on their
subordinates’ levels of ability and motivation, such that subordinates’ “immaturity” in terms of
abilities, skills, and motivation (Hersey & Blanchard, 1982), and lack of subordinates’ support
for goals valued by the leader (Vroom & Yetton, 1973) will call for more structure, directedness,
and even autocracy from the leader. Although the contingency theories were not designed to
explain the occurrence of DL, they provide rationale for why destructive leader acts can be
expected when subordinates block leaders’ goals. It is plausible that leaders may choose to enact
DL in such situations if they believe that followers are incompetent or intentionally uncooperative
and therefore should be forced to comply with leaders’ requests.
Finally, organizational reward systems that focus on the outcomes rather than on the ways
those outcomes are produced and competition for rewards are likely to make leaders consider DL
to be the most efficient way of achieving goals they value. In the previous research, organizational reward systems that emphasize successful task performance over pertinent ethical considerations were linked to managers’ decisions to pay kickbacks (Hegarty & Sims, 1978). Also,
unethical behavior among managers was shown to increase when competition for monetary
rewards was promoted (Hegarty & Sims, 1978). Similarly, it has been argued that managers are
more likely to bully their poorly performing followers when their own performance ratings
depend on their followers’ performance, and very highly performing followers when they are
perceived as competitors threatening the manager’s own career (Salin, 2003). Thus,
Proposition 8: Factors suggesting that harmful behavior is the most effective way of achieving
leaders’ goals (e.g., “immature” or uncooperative followers, organizational reward structures
deemphasizing ethical standards, competition for rewards) moderate the positive relationship
between goal blockage and leaders’ choice to engage in DL such that when such factors are
present, leaders are more likely to react to goal blockage by choosing to engage in DL.
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1323
As noted above, goal blockage is not the only factor that could influence a leader’s choice
to engage in DL. A leader’s dispositional inclination to harm others may affect his or her
engagement in DL in the absence of or in addition to goal blockage.
Leader characteristics as predictors of choice to engage in destructive leadership. Given
the centrality of leaders’ personal interests in potentially motivating their engagement in DL,
leaders with the dispositional tendency to emphasize their self-interest over interests of others and at the expense of others are more likely to engage in DL. Among other leader characteristics, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (i.e., the “Dark Triad” traits;
Williams & Paulhus, 2002) appear to be the most prominent dispositions reflecting preoccupation with self-interest and instrumental approach to people and organizations.
Machiavellianism is a tendency to view others as tools for personal use and manipulate individuals and information to attain self-serving goals (e.g., Dahling, Whitaker, & Levy, 2009).
Individuals with a strong Machiavellian disposition endorse self-centered goals of financial success, deemphasize other-centered community and family goals (Geis & Christie, 1970; Hegarty
& Sims, 1978; McHoskey, 1999), and engage in economic opportunism in an attempt to maximize their profit at the expense of others (Sakalaki, Richardson, & Thepaut, 2007). In addition,
these individuals are less susceptible to social influence, do not care about others’ needs and
aspirations (Geis & Christie, 1970), and therefore are unlikely to pursue constructive goals favoring others’ interests over their own. Moreover, Machiavellianism has been linked to the engagement in deviant behaviors in organizations (Giacalone & Knouse, 1990). Therefore, Machiavellian
leaders are dispositionally prone to pursuing goals that reflect their self-interest even if it is harmful to the organization and followers and make their followers achieve goals they value using
harmful methods of influence.
Individuals with narcissistic personality demonstrate grandiose sense of entitlement, selffocus, inflated self-esteem, and intense competitiveness (Hogan & Hogan, 2001). They are
concerned with establishing their status, prestige, and superiority, feel that they are entitled
to be served, and tend to use others for their own purposes (Kets de Vries, 1989; Morf &
Rhodewalt, 2001). Roberts and Robins (2000) demonstrated that narcissists are likely to set
self-centered goals reflecting their desire to get ahead of others. Narcissists were shown to
set hedonistic, economic, and political goals (e.g., to achieve a high standard of living and
wealth, to have an influential and prestigious occupation) and to avoid prosocial goals. In
addition to setting destructive goals, narcissists are also inclined to engage in destructive
actions (e.g., CWB; Penney & Spector, 2005). Therefore, leaders high in narcissism are
likely to disregard and even counteract others’ needs when setting goals and mobilizing followers to achieve those goals.
Finally, psychopathy weds the most negative aspects of the narcissist to the most negative
aspects of the Machiavellian. Psychopaths are characterized as lacking empathy for others and
lacking the ability to feel guilt or remorse. Such individuals are also likely to be self-centered,
impulsive, manipulative, aggressive, and prone to lying (Cleckley, 1976; Hare, 1999). Thus, it is
not surprising that psychopathy is believed to underlie deviance and CWB (LeBreton, Binning,
& Adorno, 2006; Wu & LeBreton, 2011). Therefore, we anticipate that leaders scoring higher on
measures of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy are more likely to identify destructive goals and use destructive methods of influence with followers.
1324 Journal of Management / July 2013
Proposition 9: Leaders’ dispositional tendencies to emphasize self-interest over interests of others
and at the expense of others (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) are positively related to leaders’ choice to engage in DL.
We now turn our attention to contextual factors that are likely to play a role in determining whether leaders’ choice to engage in DL will translate into the actual acts of DL. We
focus on the factors that increase or limit a leader’s discretion to act according to his or her
intentions.
Role of leader discretion in destructive leadership. Individuals are more likely to act on
their intentions when they have actual or perceived control over their behavior (Ajzen, 1991;
Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005). Leadership researchers have commonly used the term leader discretion to refer to a leader’s control over his or her goals or actions (Finkelstein & Hambrick,
1990; Kaiser & Hogan, 2007) and have pointed out how various contextual factors that limit
leader discretion can materially affect the extent to which the leader engages in certain
actions.
Kaiser and Hogan (2007) argued that macro-level factors such as an organization’s size,
age, culture strength, and existence of control or retribution mechanisms capable of preventing undesirable organizational phenomena are inversely related to leader discretion. Leader
discretion is also negatively related to power distribution within an organization, such that a
leader’s decision latitude is minimized when more people are involved in decision making
(Kets de Vries, 1989), thus limiting choices the leader might make. Other researchers have
examined micro-level factors that can affect the magnitude of a leader’s discretion. It has
been shown that discretion increases with a leader’s hierarchical position within an organization (Kaiser & Hogan, 2007), freeing the leader to engage in a broader set of actions.
Victimization researchers have identified target characteristics that weaken a target’s resistance
to DL and thereby give the leader a sense of greater discretion in harming such victims. These
characteristics include target’s introversion, aggressiveness, neuroticism, negative core selfevaluations (Aquino & Bradfield, 2000; Ferris, Zinko, Brouer, Buckley, & Harvey, 2007;
Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007), and leader–target power imbalance (Salin, 2003). Thus, it
can be concluded that when leaders believe they have or actually have more discretion, they
are more likely to act on their choices:
Proposition 10: Leaders’ choice to engage in DL is more likely to translate into DL when their
discretion is higher.
Having established conditions under which DL is likely to occur, we now discuss the
effects of such leadership.
Primary Harm Resulting from the Two Manifestations of Destructive Leadership
Primary harm from destructive goals. We propose that the primary and most proximal
outcome of leaders pursuing destructive goals will likely be direct harm to the organization’s
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1325
legitimate interests (e.g., wasting organizational resources, thwarting or fully blocking the
accomplishment of task goals, endangering organization’s reputation). Previous research
suggests that when leaders influence their followers to pursue destructive goals, harm to the
organization is direct and will occur for a number of reasons. Pursuing destructive goals will
divert organizational resources from the pursuit of the firm’s legitimate goals (Mayes &
Allen, 1977; Witt, 2003). Also, pursuit of goals that undermine the organization’s goals is
likely to delay progress on those legitimate goals and may even fully block their accomplishment (Bargh & Alvarez, 2001; Kets de Vries, 1989). In extreme cases, leaders who influence
their followers to pursue destructive goals can align the organization with unethical or illegal
goals and activities, thus placing the organization at risk (Kayes, Stirling, & Nielsen, 2007).
The effects of destructive goals on followers, however, are less clear and less predictable.
On one hand, pursuit of such goals may lead to harm to the followers. For example, leaders
who pursue goals that conflict with the organization’s interests can create ideological or role
conflicts (Gray & Ariss, 1985; Yukl, 1999) or a dysfunctional political environment (Drory,
1993), which are stressful and therefore harmful to the followers. In extreme cases, leaders
also might put followers at risk for legal action against them for “following orders” (Brief,
Dukerich, Brown, & Brett, 1996; Gimein, 2003), again resulting in harm to the followers.
Also, the literature provides examples that followers who express their dissent with leaders’
destructive goals are at risk of losing their jobs (Coleman, 1987; Kets de Vries, 1989). On
the other hand, followers may be unaware that the leader is asking them to pursue destructive
goals and suffer no harm from that goal pursuit or even benefit by pursuing destructive goals
on the behalf of the destructive leader. For example, followers who are loyal to the leader
and pursue his or her destructive goals vigorously may receive material rewards or the favor
of the leader (Anand, Ashforth, & Joshi, 2005). Thus, we predict that the pursuit of destructive goals is quite likely to harm the organization; we cannot make a confident prediction
about harm to the followers.
Proposition 11: The proximal outcome of leaders’ pursuit of destructive goals is likely to be negative consequences for the organization (e.g., exhausting organizational resources, thwarting the
accomplishment of organizational goals, and creating legal problems for the organization).
Primary harm from destructive methods of influence. In contrast to destructive goals, the
primary and most proximal harm from a leader using a DL style will be harm to his or her
followers. When leaders use such methods, they explicitly harm followers by negatively
affecting their psychological and physical health, family life, and job and life satisfaction
(Hoobler & Brass, 2006; Tepper, 2000; Tepper, Moss, Lockhart, & Carr, 2007). However,
we find that the effects of DL style on the organization are less predictable. One could argue
that DL styles directly harm organizations. For example, when a leader uses such methods,
this could create “shocks” in followers and result in immediate turnover (Lee & Mitchell, 1994),
a form of proximal harm to the firm. Moreover, one can find examples of cases where a use of
such methods appears to actually benefit the organization, especially in the short run. Bullying
and abuse can be used to drive followers to higher levels of performance and to achieving legitimate organizational goals (Einarsen et al., 2007; Gimein, 2003; Ma et al., 2004). Thus, destructive leaders can enjoy considerable success even while harming followers. So, with destructive
1326 Journal of Management / July 2013
methods of influence, we see a reversal of what is expected when the leader encourages
followers to pursue destructive goals:
Proposition 12: The proximal outcome of leaders’ use of destructive methods of influence with
followers is likely to be negative consequences for leaders’ followers (e.g., impaired physical
and psychological well-being, low job and life satisfaction).
We intentionally focused on the proximal types of harm resulting from DL. We did this
for two reasons. First, this focus helped us keep the scope of our model within reasonable
bounds. Second, as we will see later in the article, this distinction in the primary types of
harm has important implications for how organizations react to destructive leaders. We
would be remiss, however, if we did not point out that DL, if ongoing for long enough, also
is likely to inflict secondary and indirect harm on the organization’s legitimate interests and
leaders’ followers. For example, if a leader pursues destructive goals and undercuts the
organization’s legitimate interests severely, this could weaken or destroy the organization,
leading to stress or job loss for the leader’s followers, forms of indirect harm to the followers. Similarly, bullying followers can lead to excessive turnover and in turn undercut the
legitimate interests of the organization, a form of secondary harm to the organization. So,
even though these secondary issues are important, they are beyond the scope of this article,
and we leave them for future research.
Organizational Responses to Destructive Leadership
We begin our discussion of the organizational responses to DL with an assumption that if
the harm perpetrated by a destructive leader is sufficiently detrimental to the organization,
the organization will seek to reduce or eliminate such leadership processes. Drawing from
control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1982; Giglioni & Bedeian, 1974), one could argue that the
harm engendered by DL represents a deviation from the organization’s desired state of being
that the organization would like to identify and correct (Kayes et al., 2007; Lipman-Blumen,
2005a; Zahra et al., 2005). For the organization to do so, it must be able to recognize that
DL is occurring and be motivated to take countervailing actions. Below, we examine the
likelihood of discovery of DL and the likelihood that the organization will take countervailing actions once it is discovered.
Discovery of destructive leadership. The discussion of harm resulting from DL makes it
clear that both the victim of the harmful behavior and the nature of harm experienced will
differ conditional on how DL is manifested. This suggests that the likelihood of DL being
discovered (i.e., organizational authorities becoming aware of it) also may differ in this
regard. For several reasons, we expect that a leader’s use of DL style is more likely to be
discovered than his or her pursuit of destructive goals.
First, destructive methods of influence (DL style) used by the leader are often observable
by others. Abusive behaviors are often associated with heightened emotions (Anderson &
Bushman, 2002; Randall, 1997) and thus tend to be more spontaneous, harder for the leader
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1327
to control (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996), and more likely to occur in the presence of
witnesses. Also, such abuse is often grist for the office rumor mill, making many aware of
such behavior. Second, destructive actions represent behaviors that are salient and vivid,
which increases their attentional pull (Jones, 1991; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). Therefore,
organizational members are more likely to notice a leader’s use of destructive methods of
influence and consensually view them as harmful. Finally, a leader’s use of destructive
methods of influence is more likely to be reported to organizational authorities (e.g., higher
level management or human resources department) than his or her pursuit of destructive
goals. According to Jones (1991), individuals are more likely to challenge an authority figure
when his or her harmful behavior is physically or psychologically proximal. Thus, a leader’s
use of destructive methods of influence, having immediate negative effects on the followers
and being personally relevant for them, is more likely to be counteracted (e.g., reported to
organizational authorities) by victims or observers than destructive goals, which are less
personally relevant for followers. We conclude it is plausible that a DL style is more likely
to be noticed or reported than pursuit of destructive goals.
A different picture emerges when we consider the likelihood of detecting a leaders’
destructive goals. Specifically, leaders’ pursuit of destructive goals is likely to be less visible
within the organization than leaders’ use of destructive methods of influence. When leaders
encourage followers to pursue goals that are driven by the leader’s personal motives or gain
and undermine the organization’s espoused goals, it would be common for the leader to use
deception and information manipulation to hide this fact from followers and casual observers (Anand et al., 2005; Gimein, 2003). For example, it is quite likely that destructive goal
pursuit by leaders could be reframed in ways that make those goals appear to be legitimate
in the eyes of followers (Gray & Ariss, 1985; Pfeffer, 1981). Thus, it is possible that salience
of destructive goals is weakened by uncertainty about the true purpose of the leader or that
followers may not even know that destructive goals are being promoted. Finally, the likelihood of others reporting the pursuit of destructive goals by a leader is also complicated by
the subterfuge that is likely to surround the pursuit of such goals. If a leader’s goals are hidden from others, reporting of that behavior is not possible. If destructive goals are framed as
legitimate goals, or their true purpose is unclear, the chances of others seeing the leader’s
behavior as harmful and reporting it are greatly reduced. In the face of uncertainty, decisive
actions that might yield negative outcomes (e.g., whistle-blowing) are unlikely (Highhouse
& Yüce, 1996). One also must allow for the possibility that followers, or others, who are
aware of the leader pursuing destructive goals, may have mixed motives about reporting
such behavior. If those people stand to benefit personally from such behavior, they may be
complicit in not reporting such leadership to organizational authorities (Anand et al., 2005).
Thus, we propose,
Proposition 13: Organizations are more likely to discover leaders’ use of destructive methods of
influence with followers than leaders’ pursuit of destructive goals.
Countervailing actions in the face of destructive leadership. The question remains as to
whether the organization will confront such leadership when it is discovered. To understand
1328 Journal of Management / July 2013
when the organization will confront DL, we consider two major issues that come to bear
when the organization is deciding whether to confront such behavior: Is this behavior justifiable, and is the amount of harm done sufficient to merit confronting it?
Harmful behavior can be seen as justified in some circumstances, for example, when it
occurs “in the service of achieving some perceived greater good or purpose” (Molinsky &
Margolis, 2005: 245). Thus, destructive methods of influence that are used instrumentally by
leaders to meet organizationally sanctioned goals or to prompt better performance by followers (e.g., Ferris et al., 2007) may be tolerated or even encouraged by the organization (Anand
et al., 2005). The latter is likely to occur when the use of destructive methods of influence
by the leader is proven effective for advancing the organization’s legitimate interests (i.e., it
made followers achieve organizational goals in the past) or is deemed necessary for organizational survival (Ma et al., 2004; Near & Miceli, 1995). Thus, we can imagine a number of
circumstances where a leader uses destructive methods of influence with followers and that
manifestation of DL is apparent to authorities in the organization, but is tolerated, even celebrated in some cases. Organizations tolerating a leader pursuing destructive goals as justifiable strikes us as a less likely scenario since, as discussed earlier, such goal pursuit directly
undermines the organization’s legitimate interests. Consequently, we expect that destructive
methods of influence, even when discovered, are more likely to be seen as justifiable and to
be tolerated by the organization than the leader’s pursuit of destructive goals.
When one considers the amount of harm resulting from DL, it follows that more harmful
DL is more likely to be confronted. For example, the literatures on sexual harassment and
whistle-blowing reveal that organizational tolerance for harmful acts is inversely related to
the perceived seriousness of those acts (Bergman, Langhout, Palmieri, Cortina, & Fitzgerald,
2002; Near & Miceli, 1995). This suggests that as the degree of harm increases, countervailing actions become more likely. As noted earlier, a leader pursuing destructive goals directly
harms the organization. Thus, destructive goals are likely to incur greater harm for the
organization than DL style (which may or may not harm the organization’s goals). Thus,
Proposition 14: Organizations are more likely to take countervailing actions against leaders when
they encourage followers to pursue destructive goals than when they use destructive methods of
influence with followers.
Directions for Future Research
Our reframing of DL and the proposed model suggest multiple avenues for future
research. First, we argued that DL manifests itself in a leader influencing followers to pursue
destructive goals and/or a leader using destructive methods of influence with followers. In
addition, we showed that these manifestations of DL are likely to occur through separate
routes and to have different implications for the organization, followers, and leaders. Thus,
an important direction for future research is to validate the distinction between these two
manifestations by studying their differential predictors (e.g., different forms of goal blockage and their interactions with leader characteristics and contextual factors proposed in the
model) and outcomes (e.g., different likelihood of being discovered and counteracted).
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1329
In addition to testing the links proposed in the model, future research could expand
and refine this model by considering additional factors affecting leaders’ engagement in
DL and its consequences. In our review, we discussed how broad classes of leader characteristics and contextual factors may affect the enactment of DL and provided some examples
of variables in each class. Additional dispositional factors (e.g., social dominance orientation—Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; other dispositions related to leader derailment—Hogan & Hogan, 2001) and contextual influences (organizational changes—Mishra
& Spreitzer, 1998; different types of control mechanisms—Lange, 2008) could also be
considered in future studies.
Moreover, we demonstrated how DL unfolds over time in a sequence of leaders’ choices
and actions. Thus, one direction for future research is to empirically examine the proposed
processes underlying leaders’ choice to engage in DL as they develop over time. Experience
sampling methodology (Beal & Weiss, 2003) appears to be especially useful in this respect
as it allows examining leaders’ experiences, choices, and emotional and behavioral reactions
in an on-line mode. By using event-contingent recording (i.e., recording leaders’ responses
to specific events), researchers can assess leaders’ experience of goal blockage, measure
affect and thoughts triggered by such experience, and gain insights into how leaders make
sense of such experience. The use of this method, however, does not cancel out the utility of
surveying leaders and their followers, peers, and even superiors with the purpose of examining the relationships proposed in the model. The usefulness of such traditional surveys
depends on whether these surveys are conducted at multiple time points and therefore are
able to capture the proposed set of influences on DL in their expected temporal order.
Researchers can further extend the model to examine how negative effects of destructive
goals and methods of influence transpire over time. In this article, we discuss how destructive goals are likely to directly harm the organizations (e.g., exhaust organizational
resources) and destructive methods of influence are likely to directly harm leaders’ followers
(e.g., damage their psychological and physical well-being). Examining how these direct
forms of harm incur secondary, indirect harm on followers and organizations respectively
(e.g., job loss by followers and increased turnover rates) is another promising line of
research.
Furthermore, future research should more extensively examine the role of followers in the
processes underlying DL (cf. Padilla et al., 2007). The proposed model could further be
expanded to incorporate the effects of followers’ individual differences (e.g., negative core
self-evaluations, abrasive personality traits; Aquino & Bradfield, 2000; Hogan & Hogan,
2001) on the enactment of DL. Followers’ responses to manifestations of DL is another
interesting and largely unexamined topic. We recommend that the DL literature continues
the tradition initiated in the whistle-blowing (e.g., Near & Miceli, 1995) and sexual harassment (e.g., Knapp, Faley, Ekeberg, & Dubois, 1997) literatures and devotes more attention
to examining follower reactions to DL (e.g., avoiding or confronting the leader, seeking
social support, formally reporting incidents of DL; Knapp et al., 1997), types of considerations that underlie their choice of each particular response (e.g., perceived organizational
support for victims of DL, presence of effective complaint mechanisms), and differences in
follower responses to destructive goals and methods of influence (e.g., whether followers’
responses are more decisive when they are abused by a leader than when a leader encourages
them to achieve a destructive goal).
1330 Journal of Management / July 2013
One additional topic that will require researchers’ attention is the effects of DL on follower performance. Although there is anecdotal evidence that the use of destructive methods
of influence may improve follower performance, empirical evidence suggests the opposite.
DL style has been negatively related to followers’ performance (e.g., Harris, Kacmar, &
Zivnuska, 2007). One potentially useful approach to resolving this inconsistency is to examine the short-term and long-term effects of DL style on follower performance. It is possible
that leaders using destructive methods of influence may improve followers’ performance
in the short run, with this effect changing in sign over time. Alternatively, researchers
might look for moderators of the DL → performance link. For example, this relationship
may be positive in contexts that call for more directive and autocratic leadership styles
(e.g., in situations that require quick and accurate decisions, such as emergencies and
approaching deadlines; in high-stress occupations, such as military personnel and firefighters), and negative in other contexts (e.g., when constructive methods of influence
are explicitly and strongly encouraged by the organization).
Future research might also consider how broader social context affects DL. Our model
focuses primarily on the interactions between two organizational agents—leaders and followers. While these dyadic interactions deserve being studied in their own right (Krasikova
& LeBreton, 2012), it is also important to understand how leaders’ positions within broader
intraorganizational networks shape their choices with respect to enacting DL (Balkundi &
Kilduff, 2006). Perhaps, leaders with more central positions in a social network will exert
greater power and have access to more resources, thus being better able to engage in DL.
However, it is also possible that centrality will increase leader visibility and therefore make
it more difficult to engage in DL without facing repercussions. Furthermore, network characteristics may influence processes depicted in the model. For example, if networks are
sparse, it may weaken follower awareness of and resistance to DL. On the other hand, dense
networks may protect followers against the negative effects of DL by serving as a source of
social support.
One of the most challenging aspects of our model is examining the volitional
nature of DL. Determining if a leader’s goal pursuit or behavior is volitionally
harmful is a sensitive research topic, rife with problems, including (a) social desirability bias, (b) inferring intentions (an internal state of the leader) from data collected from
or about that leader, and (c) the threatening nature of such research, which could have
potentially serious implications for the leader. We also recognize that self-reports of
whether DL is volitional contain but one view. Data obtained from subordinates, peers,
or supervisors represent alternative views, which may enhance our understanding of DL
(cf. Fox, Spector, Goh, & Bruursema, 2007).
Moreover, researchers will likely get better insight into the nature of DL if they use
qualitative methods such as including open-ended questions in surveys or conducting interviews with leaders and their superiors, peers, or followers to understand what considerations
affected leaders’ choice to engage in DL. Leaders might be more likely to admit that they
had been aware of the harmful nature of their goals or actions if they are allowed to elaborate
on the reasons why they chose to pursue such goals or use such actions (e.g., if they were
guided by the goal of achieving some greater good for the organization or followers).
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1331
Our construct development work and theoretical model suggest that future empirical
research originating from our framework will likely require development and validation of
a measure of DL that takes into account the defining features of the construct. In line with
our definition of DL, we suggest that the extant measures should be refined or a new measure should be developed to reflect the harmful nature of DL, distinguish it from the related
constructs (e.g., CWB), and focus on the two manifestations of DL. Scale validation efforts
should focus on establishing convergent validity with the extant measures of harmful forms
of leadership (e.g., Tepper, 2000) and discriminant validity with the measures of other harmful nonleadership behaviors (e.g., Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Neuman & Baron, 1998).
Finally, we do not restrict our analysis of DL to leadership acts performed by employees
in formal authority positions and believe the proposed conceptualization and model of DL
will be useful also when emergent DL is of interest. However, we also realize that the distinction between leaders and managers gets blurred in organizational practice (Hunt, 2004),
given that most of the leading is expected from individuals in the formal leadership positions
who are granted the authority and resources needed for the enactment of change. In addition,
in empirical research different forms of leadership have been traditionally studied using
samples of managers or supervisors (i.e., individuals in formal leadership positions).
Therefore, although we expect that our model will be most useful in explaining the occurrence of DL among individuals in the positions of authority, we also suggest that future
research examines the emergence of destructive leaders using nonmanager samples.
Implications for Organizational Practice
DL is a harmful behavior and should be regarded by organizations as such. Its harmful
nature should not be overlooked even when it is justified by greater good and when harm
resulting from it is considered minimal. Even minor acts of DL may incur substantial harm
if they are not counteracted immediately and become chronic (cf. Duffy et al., 2002). Thus,
organizations should actively seek to reduce the likelihood of DL by minimizing the conditions that promote such leadership and/or minimizing its negative impact if it occurs.
In our model, we demonstrate that blockage of leaders’ goals, leaders’ personal characteristics, organizational context, and leaders’ discretion are four classes of factors that affect
leaders’ engagement in DL. Therefore, the incidence of DL can be minimized if organizational control mechanisms target factors within each of these groups. We nest our discussion
of the ways organizations may prevent DL in Lange’s (2008) typology of control mechanisms.
The occurrence of DL due to leaders’ dispositional characteristics can be minimized via
a mechanism that Lange (2008) named “self-controls.” This mechanism implies that a leader
is able to regulate his or her behavior to bring it in accordance with organizational norms and
therefore is less likely to engage in behaviors that violate the organization’s legitimate interests. This form of control requires leaders’ strong identification with the organization, internalization of organizational values, and desire to act in accordance with the organization’s
interests. One mechanism for facilitating this form of control is personnel selection and
placement (Lange, 2008) that should focus on identifying potentially destructive leaders. In
our model, we identified three broad classes of characteristics that make leaders prone to
1332 Journal of Management / July 2013
engaging in DL. Selecting individuals for leadership positions based on their abrasive personality traits and traits that make them prone to experiencing goal blockage and reacting to
goal blockage with destructive acts is likely to reduce the number of leaders who would
engage in DL. Furthermore, given that goal blockage is an important motivator of leaders’
choice to engage in DL, interviews and situational judgment tests designed to assess
leaders’ potential reactions to goal blockage might also become useful selection and
placement tools. Additional mechanisms for aligning leaders’ values and goals with
those of the organization include active promotion of organizational expectations during
orientations for new employees and continuous exposure of leaders to symbolic representations of organizational values and norms (e.g., organizational language, logos,
ceremonies, rituals; Harrison & Carroll, 1991; Lange, 2008).
Second, we believe DL can be prevented if organizational authorities monitor organizational environment, alter its elements that foster DL, and control such behaviors via sociocultural means or administrative channels. Punishment and incentive alignment (Lange,
2008) are two mechanisms that can be used to prevent DL by, respectively, linking destructive acts to undesirable consequences (e.g., demotions, termination of employment) and
making constructive behaviors rewarding (e.g., altering reward structures to minimize the
pursuit of self-interested goals, adapting performance appraisal methods that simultaneously
explore “whether the numbers were met and how the numbers were met”; Anand et al., 2005:
49). A more severe form of control is legal/regulatory sanctioning (Lange, 2008), which can
prevent highly detrimental acts of DL (e.g., involving followers in fraud and embezzlement)
by imposing severe disciplinary or legal sanctions (e.g., fines or even imprisonment for
severe violations) on deviant leaders. In addition, the incidence of DL can be controlled by
means of social sanctioning (Lange, 2008) based on organizational norms and expectations
regarding acceptable behavior. Social sanctioning can be enacted by developing stronger
climates that promote collaboration, justice, and prosocial standards of behavior (Kayes et
al., 2007) or by adopting formal ethics codes (Wotruba, Chonko, & Loe, 2001).
One more mechanism is vigilance controls, which provide the opportunity for all employees to monitor and raise their voice against undesirable behaviors in the organization. Given
that followers are directly involved in DL, they are more likely to be aware of leaders’
destructive goals and actions than anyone else in the organization. However, evidence exists
that followers are reluctant to report DL due to the power difference between themselves and
the leader (Knapp et al., 1997) and the fear of retaliation from their leader (Mesmer-Magnus
& Viswesvaran, 2005). Thus, organizations should design safe and accessible ways for
employees to report incidents of DL. All employees should be familiarized with the availability of such complaint mechanisms (e.g., during orientations for new employees), encouraged to report harmful behaviors, and assured that confidentiality of the information they
share will not be broken.
Finally, DL can be prevented if leader discretion to act destructively is reduced by bureaucratic and concertive controls. Bureaucratic controls involve standardization of work practices via establishing rules and policies that bring employee behaviors in line with
organizational objectives (Lange, 2008). Such controls may include physical restrictions
(e.g., password protecting information resources) and establishing procedures that restrict
leaders’ decision making (e.g., requiring leaders to obtain approval from superiors regarding
Krasikova et al. / Destructive Leadership 1333
goals they set for followers and procedures they intend to use to stimulate the achievement
of those goals). Concertive controls involve normative pressure to behave in a manner
accepted by other members of the organization (Lange, 2008). Promotion of such control
mechanisms requires shared understanding of what is acceptable in the organization, which
can be achieved via orientation programs where employees are familiarized with organizational norms, encouraging participative decision making (Kets de Vries, 1989), especially
when decisions involve establishing behavioral norms and regulations regarding misconduct
(Lange, 2008), and flattening organizational hierarchies (Pfeffer, 1981).
It is our hope that the proposed conceptualization of DL and theoretical framework
offered here will facilitate further development of a unified theoretical model of DL, stimulate progress of empirical research on the phenomenon, and lay a foundation for practical
ways organizations may address such a harmful form of leadership.
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